“It was as if some space had opened up, a little rift, between words and whatever they were supposed to be doing. I stumbled in that space, I fell."

…

"I don’t mean to exaggerate. I knew what words meant, more or less. A cup was a cup, a window a window. That much was clear. Was that much clear? There began to be moments of hesitation, fractions of a second when the thing I was looking at refused to accept any language. Or rather, between the thing and the word a question had appeared, a slight pause, a rupture."

…

"I felt tremendously tired, but also alert. Not to speak, not to form words, not to think, not to smear the world with sentenced—it was like the release of a band of metal tightening around my skull.”